Cancer-stricken Marine is denied help again

Department of Veterans Affairs has refused coverage for Sarasota man's rare disease, which he believes was contracted by drinking contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.

By DONNA KOEHN

When the long-awaited government study finally arrived in late January, proving that drinking water at Camp Lejeune was brimming with carcinogens when Sarasota veteran Tom Gervasi was stationed there in 1956, he thought maybe — just maybe — it would be enough.

But once again, Gervasi has been denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs in his quest for disability benefits for the rare male breast cancer that is killing him and many others who once lived at the U.S. Marine camp.

Gervasi, who now is constantly fatigued and has trouble breathing, says he is not giving up and plans to try again. He is worried, however, that he will die before he has a chance to see to it that his wife is free of worries about any lingering medical bills.

“We're going to continue to fight it,” he says, his breath becoming increasingly labored as he speaks.

Gervasi's difficulties come at a time when the VA is under intense scrutiny in Washington following a scathing report by the Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsgathering organization, and a mandated evaluation of the VA's performance by Congress.

The number of veterans waiting more than a year for their disability benefits to be approved grew from 11,000 in 2009, the first year of President Barack Obama's presidency, to 245,000 in December — an increase of more than 2,000 percent, the CIR report says.

It also found that tens of thousands of veterans are approved for disability benefits only after they die.

VA documents show that the number of waiting veterans will hit 1 million this month and continue to rise throughout the year.

Adding to the frustration are cases in which the VA makes mistakes in assessing disability claims. The CIR, in its months-long investigation of VA problems, revealed that this year, VA investigators found mistakes in one out of every three high-profile claims they examined.

Last year, errors were found in 73 percent of all cases ruled upon by the VA, according to department documents leaked to the CIR.

VA criticism

As part of the Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act, Congress passed legislation mandating regular training and assessment of VA employees.

The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs held a hearing this month to review the VA's performance, and found it lacking.

Committee Chairman U. S Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida blasted the VA's record and called for the resignation of Under Secretary for Benefits Allison Hickey.

“The fact is, VA's disability benefits backlog problem is getting worse, not better, and veterans are suffering as a result,” Miller said. “VA has a history of sugar-coating the problems it faces and overstating its ability to solve those problems.”

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki says he is committed to ending the backlog in 2015 by replacing paper with electronic records.

Shinseki told CNN's “State of the Union” Sunday that a decade of war and efforts to make it easier for veterans to collect compensation have driven the backlog higher during his tenure. He said that doing away with paper records will be the key to getting the wait and processing time under control.

“This has been decades in the making, 10 years of war. We're in paper, we need to get out of paper,” Shinseki said.

The Defense Department and other agencies still file paper claims, he said.

Congressional committees have held two hearings on the disability claims bottleneck in the past two weeks. Lawmakers voiced growing frustration with the VA.

A long struggle

Gervasi's anger at the VA and the Marine Corps has been ongoing, even as he worries that time is short.

The Herald-Tribune first wrote about the veteran's plight last November, as the breast cancer, diagnosed in 2003, began attacking his bones and lungs. He later appeared on “Rock Center with Brian Williams” and in USA Today and other newspapers across the country.

Gervasi says he received a call this week from an aide for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, who has taken up the veteran's fight, notifying him of his third denial of benefits.

Rubio could not be reached for comment Thursday.

“Apparently, one doctor was for it and the other one was against it,” Gervasi says. “He said he thought it was hereditary.”

But Gervasi says he had a DNA blood test called a BRACAnalysis at Sarasota Memorial Hospital that determined his cancer was not inherited.

“I guess he wanted to save the VA some money,” Gervasi says of the doctor. “I don't know.”

As if the cancer were not enough, Gervasi and Elaine, his wife of 57 years, have endured an emotional thrashing of ups and downs.

First, they watched as the Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act was signed last August granting immediate medical coverage to all veterans and their family members who had lived at the camp — but only after 1956. Gervasi had missed that deadline by six months.

The law was based on a prior study at another part of the camp. Older veterans such as Gervasi had been waiting for about four years for results of an additional study of the area where their barracks had been.

The emotional rollercoaster continued when Gervasi learned he had been denied by the VA for a second time, within days of finding out the second study supported his contention that his living area was also contaminated.

In fact, the study showed, that area was more toxic than any other part of the camp, with volatile organic compounds from fuel runoff and dry-cleaning chemicals.

Although the couple tried to tamp down their hopes, they believed this report would cause the VA to approve Gervasi's claim.